


Highway Kind

by lil_slug



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Character Death, Depression, Drabble, Grief/Mourning, M/M, One Shot, Self-Harm, Songfic, Suicide, Townes Van Zandt, Wordcount: 500-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 07:55:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15166100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lil_slug/pseuds/lil_slug
Summary: My days, they are the highway kindThey only come to leaveSongfic based on Townes Van Zandt's 'Highway Kind'





	Highway Kind

**Author's Note:**

> I just spent 10 minutes writing this because I needed to get it out of my system. I was just feeling dark, if that's even a thing. Also, I hate Harringrove. Don't know why I did this then.

_Six months_. It‘s June. This is Tornado Alley. Oklahoma. God knows what highway he is barreling down at 90 miles an hour in his now run-down BMW. Steve Harrington sure as hell doesn‘t know, and neither does the voice from the only radio station he can pick up out here.

 

 _My days, they are the highway kind_  
_They only come to leave_  
_But the leaving I don‘t mind_  
_It‘s the coming that I crave_

 

What do you know, Townes? There is no coming anymore. _Six goddamn months_. Wasn‘t it supposed to get easier? Wasn‘t there supposed to be light at the end of the tunnel? Or at the end of the road? Well, Steve can‘t see the end of the road, only the horizon, and there is certainly no light there. His engine is just catapulting him towards that massive wall of pitch black clouds at breakneck speed.

 

Maybe he can just break through it. Lift his car off the ground and penetrate the asphalt that seems to paint the sky. He is ready for this, absolutely willing to do it, as long as the clouds out there and the clouds in his mind are guaranteed to shatter.

 

The cigarette is burned down, and Steve ignites another. He didn‘t smoke before, he never needed to. But there is no one else in this car anymore. No one who could do that for him, have a cigarette butt dangling from his mouth to cloud up the interior in stinging gray smoke. Well, perhaps there is someone here with Steve, but ghosts can‘t smoke cigarettes.

 

These days, Steve likes to make himself believe it‘s the smoke that makes him tear up over and over again. Be it when he is seated against the leather of the driver‘s seat, slick with sweat, or at night, lying on a cum-stained mattress in a roadside motel, watching the pink or purple beams of light from a half-broken neon sign dancing across the ceiling. They always flicker _‚VAC N Y‘_ , or a variation of it, and sometimes Steve thinks they want to ridicule him just by showing him they are still trying to do their job while broken and useless.

 

Steve is broken and useless too. He doesn‘t try anymore. He has, for a very long time. _Six months_. Well, that‘s not that much time, is it? Regardless, he has worked. A diner. A motel. A ranch, for a few weeks. All while trying to find someone he knows is lost forever.

 

 _What‘s dragging you down? Didn‘t you hate that guy?_ People asked him, and he said yes. Only because they would have never understood what it was like to get someone like Billy Hargrove to open himself up, and to present himself as vulnerable as he really was. Only because they weren‘t with him when it happened.

 

 _Six months._ Six goddamn months since the scar deep underneath Hawkins, Indiana ripped open with a terrifying wail of creatures, shadows, and manifestations of everyone‘s worst nightmares. Six months since they beat it back one more time. Six months since Steve watched that _thing_ rip the flesh from Billy‘s bones, leaving a bloodied mess on the ground that only stopped wheezing after ten excruciating minutes. That night was as dark as this day, and ever since then Steve has been running, driving from one coast to the other and back on every route imaginable. There is nothing to find, and by now Steve can‘t persuade himself he is even trying to find anything.

 

He has crossed more than half the distance towards the cursed city of New York again, but now he knows he will never get there. Somewhere down the road trees begin to line the cracked up asphalt. Their tops are dancing in the violent wind of the beginning thunderstorm. The lightning momentarily prints images of crooked limbs onto Steve‘s retina.

 

The seatbelt is unbuckled. His foot is on the floor. His hands are off the wheel. His eyes are closed. He takes in the remainder of the cigarette with one deep inhale. Lightning flickers through Steve‘s eyelids.

 

 _Let‘s hope we meet some day_  
_If we don‘t it‘s all the same_  
_I‘ll meet the ones between us_  
_And be thinkin‘ ‘bout you_  
_And all the places I have seen_  
_And why you were not there_

**Author's Note:**

> Listen to the song. I like it.


End file.
